Monday, July 21, 2008

Today’s headlines caught me by surprise. ‘City’s Execs, Lawyers, Doctors steal body-art bastion from punks’. I realized that the city’s professionals have gained a completely new and different outlook towards body-art and tattooing in particular. An even more surprising part was that these people were middle aged and this band even included homemakers!

Many reasons can be put forward for this change in trend:1. These people are now moving towards a more modern ideology and this middle aged; professional junta refuses to be left behind.2. The idea of inking your skin permanently, with something which is close to your heart proves to be a thrilling experience. Moreover it proves the dedication of that person towards the emotion/ entity to which the tattoo is related. (Hence, these people put in a lot of thought about what they want tattooed onto them)3. Also, maybe the person finds that going through the painful ordeal gives him/her a sense of victory and accomplishments.4. And last but not the least, today tattooing is not looked down upon as junkie or hippy stuff anymore in corporate and social circles.

Cheers! To all these guys and gals who remain young at heart through their actions…

All this talk about tattoos has set me thinking…maybe I should get one too…on second thought maybe I’ll take mom and dad along!

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Today, I attained one more of the few “teenager’s milestones” in my life…I attended my first driving lesson! It was a tense yet exhilarating experience. The first lesson of course got me familiar with the basics…putting the car into the first gear, slowly releasing the clutch to thrust the car into a gradual glide…and that was it. I know, it was not much, yet it suddenly dawned on me that I had now gained a new degree of freedom, in a few weeks time it would mean an independence from the bus timings and train timetables! Now, I actually knew what the Wright brothers must have experienced on that fateful day!At the end of the class, the instructor opened the bonnet and explained to me the various automated parts and their functions. After the class got over, when I was passing through the gate of our building and heading towards the staircase, I walked over to the parking space and looked at our little WagonR. A thing that had seemed so lifeless and obvious a few days ago now seemed unique and alive…I was able to appreciate a piece of machine whose components, once started, worked in perfect harmony.Then, when I reached home and sat on the PC to deliver this beautiful experience I thought…there are so many of such inventions which irrespective of their complexity, are taken so much for granted by the us, that is the Gen-X! We work with these tools all day long and all throughout our lives and yet we do not tend to understand the indispensability and distinctiveness of such machines and tools and their inventors

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

On July 12th, the senior-most member of the blogging fraternity passed away, she was Olive Riley from Australia who lived till the ripe age of 108.She had been introduced to the art of blogging in 2007 by a friend. Without going into the further facts, which I am sure everybody has already read in the news, it surprised me…the mere fact that humans are so adaptable. A woman born in 1899, an age in which the radio had just been invented and the computer was still to come, accepted the changes around her, understood the latest trend and took to blogging like fish to water. This proves that we humans, given the proper opportunities and conditions, are able to understand and accept anything new that comes our way.Not only is this prevalent in Australia or the West, we in India also have quite a number of senior bloggers. So Kudos to Olive Riley and all such bloggers, who are a proof that ‘age’ is not a limitation for a person to learn new technologies and trends.Before I take your leave, I convey my sincere condolences to the Riley family for the loss of a family member who is an inspiration to the complete Blogosphere.